Chapter IX: The Summons

The winter was wearing away. The wild fowl were passing northward, landward. The game had changed its haunts. March was coming, the month between the seasons for the tribes, the time of want, the leanest period of the year.

Meriwether Lewis, alone one morning in the comfortable cabin which served as a house for himself and his friend, sat pondering on these things, as was his wont. His little Indian dog, always his steady companion, had taken its place on the top of the flatted stump which served as a desk, near the maps and papers which Lewis had pushed away. Here the small creature sat, motionless, mute, its eyes fixed adoringly upon its master.

The captain did not notice it. He did not at first hear the rap on the door, nor the footfall of the man who entered inquiringly.

"Yes, Sergeant Ordway?" said he presently, looking up.

Ordway saluted.

"Something for you, sir. It seems to be a letter."

"A letter! How could that be?"

"That is the puzzle, sir," said Ordway, extending a folded and sealed bit of paper. "We do not know how it came. Charbonneau's wife, the Indian woman, found it in the baby's hammock just now. She brought it to me, and I saw it was addressed to you. It must have been overlooked by you some time."

"Possibly--possibly," said Lewis. His face was growing pale. "That is all, I think, Sergeant," he added.

Now alone, he turned toward the letter, which lay upon the table. His face lighted with a wondrous smile, though none might see it save the little dog which watched his every movement. For Meriwether Lewis had received once more the thing for which every fiber of his being clamored!

He knew, without one look, that the number scratched in the wax of the seal would be the figure "4." He opened the letter slowly. There fell from it a square of stiff, white paper--all white, he thought, until he turned it over. Then he saw it looking up at him--her face indeed!

It was a little silhouette in black, done in that day before the camera, when small portraits were otherwise well-nigh impossible. The artist, skilled as were many in this curious form of portraiture, had done his work well. Lewis gazed with a sudden leap of his pulses upon the features outlined before him--the profile so cleanly cut and lofty--the hair low over the forehead, the chin round and firm, yet delicate and womanly withal. Here even the long lashes of her eyes were visible, just as in life. Yes, it was her face!

And now he read the letter, which covered many closely written sheets:

Meriwether Lewis, I said to you that my face should come to
you, wherever you might be. This time it has been long--I
cannot tell how long. That is for my messenger to determine,
not for you or me. But that it has been long I shall know,
else long since there would have been no need of my adding
this letter to the others.

Not one of them has served to bring you back! Since you now
have this one, let it advise you that she who wrote it is
grieved that you gaze upon this little portrait, and not
upon the face of her whom it represents. 'Tis a monstrous
good likeness, they tell me; but would you not rather it
were myself?

Where are you? I cannot tell. What adversities have been
yours? I cannot tell that. You cannot know what grief you
have caused by your long absence. You cannot know how many
hearts you have made sad. You cannot know how you have
delayed--destroyed--plans made for you. We are in ignorance,
each of the other, now. I do not know where you are--you do
not know where I may be. A great wall arises between us. A
great gulf is fixed. We cannot touch hands across it.

As I know, this will not move you; but I cannot restrain
this reproach. I cannot help telling you that you have made
me suffer by your silence, by your absence. Do I make you
suffer by looking at you with reproach in my eyes--as I do
now?

You have forgotten your childhood friend! I may be dead as
you read--would you care? I have been in need--yet you have
not come to comfort me and to dry my tears.

Figure to yourself what has happened to all my plans and
dreams for you. Even I cannot tell of that, because, as I
write, it all lies in the future--that future which is the
present for you as you sit reading this. All I know is that
as you read it my appeal has failed.

I can but guess how or where these presents may find you;
for how shall I know how wise or how faithful my messenger
has been? Are you on the prairie still, Meriwether Lewis?
Is it winter? Does the snow lie deep? Are the winds keen and
biting? Are you well fed? Are you warm? Have you bodily
comforts? Have you physical well-being?

How can I answer all these questions? Yet they come to my
mind as I write.

Are you in the mountains? Were there, after all, those great
Stony Mountains of which men told fables? Have you found the
great unicorn or the mammoth or the mastadon which Mr.
Jefferson said you were likely to meet? Have you found the
dinosaur or the dragon or the great serpents of a foregone
day? Suppose you have. What do they weigh with me--with you?
Are they so much to you as you thought they would be? Is the
taste of all your triumphs so sweet as you have dreamed,
Meriwether Lewis?

Have you grown savage, my friend--have you come to be just a
man like the others? Tell me--no, I will not ask you! If I
thought you could descend to the lawless standard of the
wilderness--but no, I cannot think of that! In any case,
'tis too late now. You have not come back to me.

You see, I am writing not so much to implore you to return
as to reproach you for not returning. By the time this
reaches you, it will be too late in our plans. We could not
afford to wait months--three months, four, six--has it been
so long as that since you left us? If so, it is too late
now. If we have failed, why did we fail?

They told me--my father and his friends--and I told you
plainly, that if your expedition went on, then our plan must
fail. But now I must presume that you have succeeded, or by
this time are beyond the feeling of either success or
failure. If you have failed, it is too late for us to
succeed. If you have succeeded, then certainly we have
failed. As you read this, you may be doing so with hope. I,
who wrote it, will be sitting in despair.

Meriwether Lewis, come back to me, even so! It will be too
late for you to aid me. You will have ruined all our hopes.
But yours still will be the task--the duty--to look me in
the face and say whether you owe aught to me. Can I forgive
you? Why, yes, I could never do aught else than forgive. No
matter what you did, I fear I should forgive you. Because,
after all, my own wish in all this----

Ah! let me write slowly here, and think very carefully!

My greatest wish in this, greater than any ambition I had
for myself or my family--_has been for you!_ See, I am
writing those words--would I dare tell them to any other man
in all the world? Nay, surely not. But that I trust you, the
very writing itself is proof. And I write this to you, who
never can be to me what man must be to woman if either is to
be happy--the man to whom I can never be what woman must be
if she is to mean all to any man. Apart forever! We are
estranged by circumstance, sundered by that, if you please,
weak as those words seem. And yet something takes your soul
to mine. Does something take mine to you, across all the
wilderness, across all the miles, across all the long and
bitter months?

I say to you once more that in all this my demand upon you
has not been for myself, nor wholly for my father. Let me be
careful here.

This impassable gulf is fixed between us for all our lives.
Neither of us may cross it. But I have been desirous to see
you stand among men, where you belong. Do not ask me why I
wished that--you must never ask me. I am Mrs. Alston, even
as I write.

And as for you? Are you in rags as you read this? Are you
cold and hungry? Are you alone, aloof, deserted, perhaps
suffering, with none to comfort you? I cannot aid you. Nay,
I shall punish you once more, and say that it was your
desire--that you brought this on yourself--that you would
have it thus, in spite of all my intervention for you.

Moreover, you shall say to yourself always:

"She asked and I refused her!"

Nay, nay! I shall not be so cruel. I shall not say that at
all. Let me mark that out! Because, if I write that, you
will think I wish to hurt you. And, my friend, let me admit
the truth--the truth I ought not to lay upon you as any
secret--_I could never wish to hurt you._

They say that men far away in the wilderness sometimes long
for the sight of the face of a woman. See, now you have
that! I look up at you! What is your impulse? I am alone
with you--I am in your hands--treat me, therefore, with
honor, I pray you!

You must not raise my face to yours, must not bend yours to
mine. See now, measure my trust in you, Meriwether Lewis!
Estimate the great confidence I hold in you as a gentleman
because--do you not see?--a gentleman does not kiss the
woman whom he has at a disadvantage--the woman who can never
be his, who is another's. Is it not true?

Happiness is not for us. We are so far apart. I am sad. Good
night, Meriwether Lewis! I, too, have your picture by
me--the one you gave me years ago when I was in Virginia.
And it--good night, Mr. Meriwether Lewis!

Place me apart--far from you in the room. Let my face not
look at you direct. But in your heart--your hard heart of a
man, intent on dreams, forgetful of all else--please, please
let there linger some small memory of her who dares to write
these lines--and who hopes that you never may see them!